Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her, has yet to confirm she will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to Chuck Grassley, the panel's Republican chairman.
"We have reached out to her in the last 36 hours three or four times by email, and we have not heard from them," Grassley said Tuesday morning on conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt's radio show. "So it kind of raises the question, do they want to come to the public hearing or not?"
Asked about the chairman's claim, a spokesman for the Judiciary Commitee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, told CNBC: "It could be that they haven't heard from her yet because they scheduled the hearing without first talking with her or her lawyer."
Grassley had originally opposed scheduling a public hearing before the 21-member Judiciary Committee, saying in a statement that the "standard procedure" would be to schedule follow-up calls with Kavanaugh, 53, and Ford, 51.
Ford alleges that Kavanaugh had drunkenly held her down on a bed and attempted to take her clothes off when they were both in high school in the 1980s. Kavanaugh's friend Mark Judge was in the room as well, and jumped on them, according to Ford.
Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump's second pick for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, has denied the allegation. Judge told The New Yorker that he had "no recollection" of the incident Ford describes.
The Republican-controlled committee had recently completed Kavanaugh's heated and highly politicized judicial hearings, and was set to vote Thursday to push Kavanaugh's nomination forward toward confirmation.
But Democrats and Republicans, including crucial swing vote Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, called for a hearing. Both Kavanaugh and Ford, through her attorney, said they would be willing to defend their positions in public testimony. Grassley scheduled the hearing for Monday, Sept. 24.
But as of Tuesday morning, Grassley said in the radio interview, neither Ford nor her lawyer, Debra Katz, had confirmed her attendance.
"We're delaying the vote strictly to get all the facts out on the table," Grassley said.
Katz did not respond to CNBC's requests for comment on Grassley's claim.
Collins had earlier said that Kavanaugh would "obviously" be disqualified from the high court if he lied in denying Ford's allegation, and called for a public hearing.
"I really hope that she doesn't pass up that opportunity," Collins said Tuesday.
Later Tuesday morning, Feinstein blasted Grassley's proposed hearing, which is so far only set to include Kavanaugh and Ford as witnesses, as insufficient.
"Chairman Grassley today said there would be only two witnesses invited to testify at the Kavanaugh hearing next week on sexual assault allegations. Compare that to the 22 witnesses at the 1991 Anita Hill hearing and it's impossible to take this process seriously," Feinstein said.
"This is another attempt by Republicans to rush this nomination and not fully vet Judge Kavanaugh," the California Democrat added.
-CNBC's Tucker Higgins and Brian Schwartz contributed to this article.
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